Major Carriers Participate in OIF Demo

CHICAGO -- Seven of the world's largest telecommunications carriers declared the Optical Internetworking Forum's (OIF) second Worldwide Interoperability Demonstration a complete success in a statement issued at SUPERCOMM 2005 in Chicago. AT&T, China Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, NTT Laboratories, Telecom Italia and Verizon hosted the event at test facilities in six countries, on three continents. The carriers said the event was of vital importance to the industry and to the development of next generation networks.

Thirteen optical equipment suppliers highlighted solutions for support of Ethernet services over multi-domain SONET/SDH transport networks by employing OIF Implementation Agreements (IAs) in a multi-carrier, multi-vendor environment. Participating system suppliers included Alcatel, Avici Systems, Ciena Corporation, Cisco Systems, Inc., Fujitsu, Huawei Technologies, Lambda OpticalSystems, Lucent Technologies, Mahi Networks, Marconi, Nortel, Sycamore Networks and Tellabs.

The demonstration is supported by test equipment provided by Navtel Communications.

"Based on capabilities showcased in last year's demo, we have developed an adaptive bandwidth optical network service," said Scott Beckett, product manager optical services at AT&T. "We are looking forward to evolving the service requirements and introducing new capabilities based on dynamic Ethernet services enabled by intelligent optical networks."

Huo Xiaoli, overall technical lead for the Interoperability test at China Telecom Beijing Research Institute, said, "China Telecom is pleased to host the OIF's World Interoperability Demonstration event again. Serving as a host site provides us with a great opportunity to work closely with leading edge equipment suppliers."

Hans-Martin Foisel, Innovation Project manager at Deutsche Telekom and OIF Carrier Working Group chair, said, "This worldwide event takes interoperability to a whole new level. The interoperability of the first integration of distributed control plane and Ethernet over SDH/SONET adaptation functions is of high importance for carriers. This event was an excellent opportunity to gain first-hand experiences and knowledge in this new networking area."

Francois Gallant, head of the Metro Core Network R&D Laboratory at France Telecom, said, "Our R&D laboratory is pleased to have contributed to the OIF Worldwide Interoperability Demonstration. This global test environment created a new framework for international collaboration where suppliers and operators strive jointly for the progress of standards. It considerably accelerated the development process for advanced services in intelligent optical networks. For operators, this means a significant reduction in the time required for fast provisioned and dynamic bandwidth services to reach the market."

Satoru Okamoto, senior research engineer of NTT Network Service Systems Laboratories, said, "We welcomed the opportunity to participate in a worldwide interoperability event such as the OIF demonstration, which will help move the industry towards interoperable implementations and high quality Ethernet WAN services based on switched optical networks."

Mr. Alberto Maria Langellotti, head of Wireline/Network Services/Backbone Transport & OPB at Telecom Italia, said, "Carried out by the R&D branch of Telecom Italia Lab, the OIF Worldwide Interoperability Demonstration was an excellent opportunity for our company to demonstrate and confirm the fast growth of key, innovative network technologies. This was achieved by participating in a joint effort with other carriers and vendors, and playing an active role in OIF, to promote and support the development of optical networking solutions."

Mr. Stuart Elby, vice president, Network Architecture, Verizon, said, "Verizon is truly impressed with the vendors' interoperability progress being demonstrated at SUPERCOMM 2005. These demos show the vendors and carriers are committed to open standards and that the standards do indeed work. The tremendous amount of resources from all parties has established a foundation to transform the OTN from a static network to one capable of providing dynamic transport services on a global scale."

"The OIF creates Implementation Agreements and interoperability events that provide vendors and carriers with real world solutions in advance of technology deployment," said Rama Ati of Cisco Systems and co-marketing chair of the OIF. "The success of the global demonstration and the opportunity to view the ongoing live network test at SUPERCOMM provides an event like no other in the industry."

Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF)